Obamacare Exchanges: Most States Opt Out

MOST STATES “JUST SAY NO” TO EXCHANGES

This week marked the deadline for states to inform the federal government as to their intentions regarding Obamacare’s costly and controversial state health care exchanges.

The good news? Only seventeen states affirmatively moved to set up these government-run “marketplaces” – while twenty-six states explicitly rejected them. A small group of states are setting up “hybrid” exchanges while two states – Florida and Utah – simply let the clock expire on the deadline without responding. South Carolina long ago announced that it would not establish one of these exchanges – which are central components of U.S. President Barack Obama’s socialized medicine law.

(For a great map/ list of which states are in/ out on Obamacare exchanges, click on this page from our friends at NetRightDaily).

“State officials are very smart not to set up their own exchanges since any costs beyond what the Feds offer to help pay is on their taxpayers’ dimes,” writes Wesley Smith, Jr. of National Review Online.

That’s true. Not only that, their refusal to establish these so-called “marketplaces” makes it extraordinarily difficult – if not impossible – for the federal government to meet its October 1, 2013 deadline to have exchanges up and running in all fifty states.

Michael Cannon of The Cato Institute – one of the nation’s foremost experts on the exchanges – says there is no way Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services will meet this deadline.

“HHS expected to be running zero exchanges,” Cannon told Investors’ Business Daily. “They have been throwing money at states to bribe them to start exchanges. HHS maintains they’ll have these things up and running by October 2013. I don’t know anyone who is confident about that and I’m ready to predict that they will not.”